


Column C

by FlatlandDan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Feelstide 2013, M/M, No Sex, Room Service, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlatlandDan/pseuds/FlatlandDan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Phil Coulson has zero regrets about using the company credit card and Clint Barton has zero regrets about ordering the crumble.</p><p>A Christmas story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Column C

**Author's Note:**

> With extra special thanks to my favourite occasionally geographically co-located beta, the lovely pollyrepeat. I owe you a coke.
> 
> Written for Feelstide 2013 for the prompt "White as snow, black as night"

He could get used to this.

It hadn’t been a particularly difficult mission but it had been a tiring one, full of nights of wakeful silence for both of them. With SHIELD on holiday staff, requesting a driver to collect them would have been more trouble than it was worth, so he had called Nick, taken out his extra black credit card and gotten a hotel room at the first place he could find.  Standing in the lobby, he had blinked a little at the receptionist when the price was mentioned and pointedly ignored the comment that it was a double.  It was December 24th and he really didn’t care anymore.

He didn’t regret a penny of it, because Clint Barton had walked in, taken one look at the giant bed with fluffy pillows and inviting blankets and face planted into it fully clothed.  Phil wanted to leave him there, wanted to leave him in that little bit of peace, but Clint had been in the field for three days and they would both regret it if Phil left him here.  Instead he gave himself one moment to look over the lean body clothed in black, sprawled over the field of snow white blankets and then walked over and started poking Clint in the ribs.  

“Shower,” he insisted, firmly. He was fairly sure the grunted reply had included the word sir, but Clint just curled in on himself like an armadillo.  “No, really.  You stink and I have to share a bed with you.”  

He could hear Clint’s breathing start to level out.

“Barton, it’s Christmas.  Please.  This is the best present you could ever get for me.  Wake up, take a shower.” Clint’s eyes rolled open, his half awake brain processing the world around him.  Any other time, Phil would have teased him about it, but tonight that just felt cruel.

“We get room service,” he replied, before unsteadily rolling to his feet and stumbling into the bathroom.  “We get room service!” Barton yelled more forcefully as he dropped a pile of clothes outside the door.  

“I’ll even let you order dessert,” Phil retorted. He heard the shower turn on and felt a weight leave him.  Arguing with a half asleep Barton was low on his list of things he had wanted to do that night and explaining room service to accounting was something in the future. Right then, he just wanted to copy Barton and flop on that bed.  He knew he had five minutes before he could get into the shower, and really, he would wake up when he heard the water turn off.  It didn’t take much more convincing for him to take his tie, jacket, shoes and dress shirt off and lie down on the covers.

He woke up five hours later, the warm furnace of Barton’s back against his, and a note resting on the bedside table.

 

_1\. I’m Clint Barton and I’m sleeping next to you. Don’t shoot me._

_2\. You promised me room service._

_3\. How come I had to take a shower and you didn’t?_

_4\. I took your socks off.  I know how much you hate sleeping in them._

_5\. Don’t worry. I put the Hoot alarm on the door and windows. We’re good._

 

It was, Phil decided, the nicest way he’d woken up in a while.  Normally, he would have taken the floor or a couch precisely because neither of them were used to sleeping with people but this felt...safe.  He could see the cool blue on of the alarm on the window, just as Barton had promised, and for a minute everything was peaceful.  He listened to the steady breathing coming from behind him, listened as it hitched and changed and then realised that until a few seconds before it had been synchronised. 

“I know you’re awake.” Barton said quietly, his voice muffled by pillows.  Phil felt his smile widen.  “I want a steak. And mashed potatoes.”

“And I want them to recommission one of those bombers so we can fly in luxury. We can’t always get what we want,” Phil replied, even as he reached for the room service menu and the light.

“And crumble.  Any kind of crumble. With ice cream.” Barton pulled the pillow over his head and groaned when the light went on.

“Stop being a big baby.  I can’t order food in the dark.”

“Sure you can. You’ve done it before,” came the mumbled reply.

“Go back to sleep, Barton.”  Phil didn’t even look at the prices as he scanned the menu, pathetically grateful that places this expensive had a full menu 24 hours a day.  “No, wait.  Wake up, Barton.  You have to have a vegetable.”

He could tell Barton was awake, heard the little sigh he made when he was disappointed in a question but knew he was going to have to humour the person. “Potato.”

“Potato is not a vegetable.  It’s a starch.” Phil told him, trying to keep all signs of reproachfulness out of his voice. “You can have peas, carrots or green beans.”

“I really don’t give a fuck.”

“I could bring up your diet guide on my tablet, if you want.” Barton sat up as Phil finished speaking, twisting so that he could fix his eyes on Phil.  “The longer we play Bland Bureaucrat vs. Calm Assassin chicken the longer it’s going to take to get our food.”

“Green beans,” Barton replied, but his lips were twitching into a smile so Phil didn’t really worry that he had taken it too far. It was a fine line with Barton and, Phil had to admit, a fine line with himself.  Accepting that they naturally pissed each other off at times had been a good development in their working relationship, and one that Phil relished at times like this.  He reached over, picked up the phone and ordered and then reluctantly got out of bed.  Barton, predictably, rolled over into the warm spot he’d left.

“It’s going to snow,” Phil said with a resigned sigh as he peered out the window, not expecting the other person in the room to reply.  “That’s going to make lots of kids happy.”

“It always made me happy.” The subject of the reply made Phil as surprised as much as sound of the voice.  Clint Barton, as far as Phil knew, never talked about his early childhood.  He’d read the report when Barton has been recruited, the cruel extraction of the information from the psychiatrists necessary to build a training program, so he knew better than to ever ask.

“I grew up spending Christmas in Texas with my Grandmother.  I used to be really envious of kids who had a white Christmas like in the movies.”

“I was envious of kids who got to spend Christmas with grandmothers.”  Phil was willing to let the subject drop, let the conversation fade into the walls after that, but Barton continued.  “You know, between the two of us we had a pretty perfect Christmas.”

“Your snow, my grandmother?”

“My mom made a mean scalloped potato as well.”

“You would have had to deal with cheek pinching.”

“ _It’s A Wonderful Life_ from 7 am to 10 pm.” Even Phil had to wince at that.  “It was my mom’s favourite so I feel bad for hating it, but I do. I hate it so much.”  Clint laughed a little at his own words and Phil could see his eyes track him as he let go of the curtain.

“Maybe we should compromise.  Take a little from Column A and a little from Column B.”

“Column C.”

“C as in Christmas?” Phil really couldn’t help himself sometimes.  Thankfully, they were both saved by a knock on the door signalling room service.  He pulled the trays into the room and smiled benignly at the delivery guy before shutting the door.

“Gimmie,” Barton said as he rolled out of bed, taking the top blanket with him and making grabby hands at the food.  Phil ignored him completely, neatly swerving away and deposited the food on the table by the window.

“We’re going to eat at the table.  Like the trained professionals we are.” He wasn’t actually sure Barton was listening to him anymore, now that the food was in front of him. They both fell onto the food and into the companionable silence that enveloped them more often than not.

“I have to admit, I could get used to this Column C thing.” Barton told him, scraping the last of the crumble out of the dish.  “Good food, comfy bed, you only half telling me what to do.”

“You love it when I tell you what to do.” Phil replied, without really thinking. He only had a second to be mortified, to try and think of a way he could correct, or at least add something on to that sentence, before Barton hummed in agreement.

“I do.  I really, really do.”  Barton frowned a little and dug his spoon into the corner of the dish, scraping in an almost absent minded way.  “You’re everything I need.”

It was magical, really, when Barton’s mind caught up with his mouth.  Phil could see his mind going through exactly what his own had gone through about 30 seconds before.

“I don’t want to sleep with you though.  Well, actually.  I do.  That was nice.  That whole falling asleep with someone shit.  Shit. Sir.” Barton let his voice trail off and kept his eyes fixed on the now empty bowl.

“It’s complicated,” Phil began, only to be cut off by Barton snorting.

“It really is, isn’t it,” he said sadly.

“We could compartmentalize it for a while,” Phil suggested.  “Wait to see if it blows over.”

“Like a blizzard.” Phil nodded along to Barton, to Clint’s words.

“I don’t think we’re ready for this conversation.”

“Oh god, no.  We’re really not.”  Clint looked up at him, eyes rolling and half smile on his lips.

“But you know, maybe Column C can be an evolution? We don’t have to get to the end right right away.” Phil tried to keep the hope out of his voice, he really did, but he was tired and Clint just knew him well enough to hear it.

“You’re perfect,” Clint whispered.  “Your life is perfect.  You have a house, and an extended family, and friends outside of work.  You have a local bar and favourite places to eat.  And yeah, I know we have the same fucked up job.  I know we both have the same nightmares.  But you could have a life that wasn’t that, if you wanted.  I’d like one of us to have that.”

“I have the back of the world's greatest marksman, and I know he has mine,” Phil replied with a soft smile.  “Sometimes, literally.”

“You could be normal.”  

“And you could be happy.” Phil shrugged and began to stack their plates.  Clint leaned back in his chair, lost in thought.

“Oh hey, look!” Clint said, gesturing out the window. “You were right.  It is going to snow.”  They both peered out at the small white flakes, falling slowly at first before increasing and starting to cover the black pavement below. Across from him, Clint yawned. 

“Go to bed, Clint.  I’ll take the floor.” Clint rolled his eyes at him again before reaching over to grab his wrist, pull Phil to his feet and push him towards the bed.

“Sleeping in the same bed in this brave new world of Column C holiday traditions we’ve started.  It’s part of the comfy bed bit.”  Phil knew, even as he was being manhandled into bed, that the drive back tomorrow was going to include a conversation about tonight.  He knew they would have to make rules, draw lines and set expectations.  He knew that Clint would be self deprecating and he would try and remain neutral to the point of being almost unable to say what he wanted.  He knew they would find the middle ground, probably somewhere around St. Louis.

But right now he was stipping down to his boxers and undershirt, crawling under the covers of a four star hotel, full of food and joy.  If being in this bed had felt nice before, it felt even better when Clint tentatively put his hand over Phil’s chest and smushed his face into the back of his neck.

“An evolution?” Clint asked him.  Phil nodded and let his hand reach up, his thumb run over the web of skin between Clint’s thumb and index finger.

“We have 23 letters to get through before we have to decide what we’re going to be.  I think we should use them all.”  He felt Clint smile into his shoulder.

It was 2 am on Christmas morning, and Phil was the happiest he had been in a while.  He could get used to this.

  
  



End file.
